BEFORE: OK, that's 21 films in the Summer Rock & Doc Block so far, so let's take a break for lunch, now that I've reached another century mark. A break from all the films about dead celebrities, to watch a documentary about a dead restaurant chain. This is another film that I saw being screened at DocFest last November, and I made a mental note to get it on my list when it became available. It's not streaming anywhere yet for free, so I had to pay $3.99 to watch it on YouTube, but based on the cast list, if I don't watch it NOW, when will I be able to fit it into the chain?
Carl Reiner carries over from "Betty White: First Lady of Television".
THE PLOT: Documentary centers on the vending machine-based culture popularized in the 20th century that offered fresh cooked meals in a commissary-style eatery.
AFTER: Honestly, I was on the fence about including this one - Carl Reiner's in tomorrow's film, too, so I could have dropped this one and just continued on, but I'm glad I didn't. The Automat MEANT something to American society, or at least in the two cities where it existed, which were New York and Philadelphia. I remember the last Automat restaurant, which was on the corner of 42nd St. and 3rd Ave., which closed in 1991. I was working for a little production company downtown near the World Trade Center, but they always did their post-production - editing and FX - at Post Perfect, which was in the Daily News building on 42nd St. (seen in the 1977 "Superman" movie, subbing in for the Daily Planet) so I was in that neighborhood quite a lot whenever a project was being edited. I don't think I ever ate there, I was too scared of it for some reason, but now I wish that I had. I was 21 or 22 and hadn't developed a taste for coffee yet, I think for lunch I ate mostly frozen pot pies or 50-cent hot dogs from Gray's Papaya.
I remember thinking, "I know what a horn is, but what's a hardart?" It turns out the company was founded back in the day by two men, Joseph Horn and Frank Hardart. Ah, a personal 34-year old mystery solved!
The first automat in the U.S. opened in 1902 in Philadelphia, inspired by restaurants operating in Berlin, Germany, and then the first NYC Automat opened in 1912 in Times Square, then a 2nd in Union Square the same week. By 1924 the Horn & Hardart Corporation also opened retail stores, using the advertising slogan "Less Work for Mother" - they were a hit, because not everyone possessed the skills to make apple pies at home. And then when the depression hit, these restaurants were enormously popular, because people could get a sandwich or a small bowl of macaroni & cheese or some baked beans for just a couple nickels. Socially, this was the great equalizer, and people from all walks of life, from the rich to the poor (OK, probably from the middle-class to the poor) could get a decent meal in a clean environment as long as they could round up a few nickels. Large families and working people also depended on the Automats if they didn't have a lot of money or time to cook meals at home.
By 1941 the company had over 150 restaurants and retail stores in NYC and Philly, serving 500,000 patrons per day, and while some of the food was prepared in each store, the baked goods were made in a central location and a fleet of trucks was delivering them to each store, where workers would slice the pies and re-stock the rotating drums that supplied the little windows opened by the knobs on the customer side. Some foods came from hot steam tables, but mostly items came from those little windows, while kids wondered about the "magic" that refilled each dispenser, and coffee was dispensed by spouts covered by fancy dolphin-shaped sculpted ornaments. People grew accustomed to the salisbury steaks, the beef pies, the fish cakes, and as a bonus the illusion created was that the food seemed untouched by human hands. Meanwhile women in glass booths were busy changing dollars into nickels, always giving out the proper number, and people could eat their food on shiny tables in huge decorated halls.
The Horn & Hardart company advertised heavily on radio and sponsored a variety show with talented children singing, during the 1940's on radio and then on TV starting in 1948. Jack Benny, who played a notorious cheapskate, launched his TV show with a party at the Automat in 1950, giving each guest a roll of nickels, and maybe you remember the restaurant being name-checked in the Marilyn Monroe song "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend". "A kiss may be grand / but it won't pay the rental / On your humble flat / Or help you at the automat." History now regards the success of the automats as a by-product of the Depression and Pre-World War II economy, where 20th Century American efficiency created a bustling operation that kept its prices low by removing most of the service frills, passed those savings along to the customer, and made up the difference by preparing food in bulk and serving in high volumes.
Eventually, times changed and the cost of coffee had to be increased from 5 cents to 10 cents, which sent a shockwave through the NYC community. The Automats stayed popular until the 1960's, when fast-food chains started to dominate, but also the culture changed and people started leaving urban areas for the suburbs, seeking less crime and better lives for their kids. Also, people started to prefer waitress service and items from specialized restaurants and bakery shops, so the business model for the Automat became less sustainable as time went by. The food from the Automat that kept people alive during the Depression was perceived as basic and antiquated. The Horn & Hardart company tried to change with the times and turned many of their NYC operations into Burger Kings, Arby's and Bojangles' Chicken outlets. The company also lost money by purchasing the Royal Inn in Las Vegas for $7.4 million, giving it a $3.5 million renovation, and then selling it three years later when it started to lose money. (Talk about a curse, this Vegas property was also owned over the years by Debbie Reynolds and the World Wrestling Federation at various times, it was also called the Royal Americana, the Hollywood Hotel, the Greek Isles and the Clarion...did it ever turn a profit for anyone?)
Just like Betty White, Elaine Stritch, Gordon Lightfoot, the Automat had a good run for a long time...but there's that expiration date theory again. Life ain't nothing but a series of questionable decisions that all appeared to make some kind of sense at the time, and someday even Gooble and Amazon are going to go the way of the dinosaur. And now I'm starting to sound like an old fogey complaining about the price of iced coffee at Dunkin Donuts which seems very overpriced at $3.50 - I mean, come on, it's just coffee and ICE, for chrissakes. It shouldn't cost me more than 50 cents.
Could this dining format come back into style? We may be heading into another recession, or even another Great Depression (the first one wasn't really "great", can we have just an OK depression?) so imagine a new Automat 2.0 where every food item costs a dollar, and coffee is 50 cents, wouldn't that be great? And you wouldn't have to deal with waiters who refuse to write your order down on that little pad because they say they can remember it just fine, and then they screw your order up and they still expect a 20% tip after that. We've been to a couple restaurants lately that allow us to swipe our credit card at the table, so no need to bring your credit card up to the cash register, or entrust it to a server who might steal the number or make a cloned copy of the card. Why not automate the whole damn restaurant, you just scan a QR code to see the whole menu on your phone, you use an app or a wi-fi connection to place your order directly to the kitchen, no need to flag down a waiter. Then your phone gets a text message or an alert that the food is ready, and a robot or a drone is bringing it to your table, and if you need ketchup or another knife you just get one through your smartphone the same way. And then when the meal is over you swipe your card right at your table, just like you do when you buy an item in a store. And the restaurant saves money by not hiring waiters and paying their FICA and their health insurance, and ideally they then pass the savings on to the customers in the form of lower prices. (Yeah, right... When do prices ever go DOWN these days?)
Anyway, the reason I had to pay to watch this film on YouTube is that it's NOT on free streaming yet, but just watch, it will probably air on PBS next month, and I could have watched it for FREE... I've been getting back to entering films in festivals lately, and this film is still playing in them - so if you want to see it live in person, you can catch it on July 18 at the Jewish Film Festival in Pittsfield, MA, on July 24 at the Kan-Kan Cinema in Indianapolis, July 31 at the Texas Theatre in Dallas, or July 31 at the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival in Australia. Just tell them I sent you - the song that Mel Brooks sings about Automat's coffee over the end credits is probably worth the price of admission by itself.
Also starring Ron Barrett, Mel Brooks (last heard in "Leap!"), Lorraine Diehl, Ruth Bader Ginsburg (last seen in "Rigged: The Voter Suppression Playbook"), Wilson Goode, Elliott Gould (last seen in "Ocean's Eight"), Marianne Hardart, Paul Hardart, Norris Horn, Lisa Keller, Colin Powell (last seen in "Shock and Awe"), Apache Ramos, John W. Romas, Howard Schultz, Alec Shuldiner, Steve Stollman,
with archive footage of Bud Abbott (last seen in "The One and Only Dick Gregory"), Lou Costello (ditto), Frankie Avalon, Jack Benny (last seen in "Who Was That Lady?"), Peter Boyle (last seen in "Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed"), Eddie Bracken, Sid Caesar (last seen in "The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart"), Jimmy Carter (last seen in "Irresistible"), Rosemary Clooney, Tim Conway (also carrying over from "Betty White: First Lady of Television"), Doris Day (last seen in "George Carlin's American Dream"), James Dean (last seen in "No Direction Home: Bob Dylan"), Eddie Fisher, Annette Funicello, Max Gail (last seen in "I'll See You in My Dreams"), Jackie Gleason (last seen in "Tiny Tim: King for a Day"), Cary Grant (last seen in "Everything Is Copy"), Audrey Hepburn (last seen in "You, Me and Dupree"), Gregory Hines (last seen in "Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her"), Bob Hope (last seen in "Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond"), Madeline Kahn (last seen in "Paper Moon"), Burt Lancaster (last seen in "Atlantic City"), Peter Lawford, Janet Leigh (last seen in "A Single Man"), Hal Linden, Dean Martin (last seen in "Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood"), Victor Mature, Bernadette Peters (last seen in "Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me"), Donna Reed, Debbie Reynolds (last seen in "Connie and Carla") Jean Simmons (last seen in "The Robe"), Frank Sinatra (last seen in "Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind"), Arnold Stang, Elizabeth Taylor (last seen in "The Lost Daughter"), Leslie Uggams (last seen in "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks"), and the voices of Mel Blanc, Allen Funt, Ed Herlihy (last seen in "Malcolm X"), Alan Reed,
RATING: 6 out of 10 slices of lemon meringue pie
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